Bautista Approaching Ruthian Levels

John Danks used some choice words to describe his altercation with Jose Bautista yesterday. Although many insults were hurled towards the Blue Jays slugger, Danks may have actually inadvertently paid him a compliment.

Obviously the sound bite that everyone latched onto was the one were Danks called Bautista an “(expletive) clown”, but this one peaked my interest as well:

“No doubt, he’s one of the best hitters in the league. But he’s out there acting like he’s Babe Ruth.”

Nobody wants to throw out the B-word around freely in this era, but just for the sake of comparison, I wanted to see how Jose Bautista’s numbers measured up to the Great Bambino through the first 45 games of the season.

I took samples from both Ruth’s record-breaking 60 home run season in 1927 as well as arguably his best season ever, his MVP-winning year in 1927. The results are frighteningly similar across the board:

Player

Year

Games

HR

RBI

BB

AVG

OBP

SLG

OPS

Babe Ruth

1927

45

16

41

44

.335

.476

.689

1.165

Babe Ruth

1923

45

12

36

54

.351

.524

.727

1.251

Jose Bautista

2011

45

20

36

45

.350

.498

.788

1.285

It may be a little premature to make these conclusions almost one third of the way through the season, but by all indications if Jose Bautista can continue this pace, he will have a season that can be dubbed worthy of being “Ruthian”.

If Jose Bautista is “acting like Babe Ruth” as John Danks indicated, he’s doing a pretty damn good impression of the Great Bambino.

Ian has been writing about the Toronto Blue Jays since 2007. He enjoyed the tail-end of the Roy Halladay era and vividly remembers the Alex Rodriguez “mine” incident. He’ll also retell the story of Game 5 of the ALDS to his kids for the next 20 years.